Mary looked round her. There was no longer a human being in sight; there was only tree after tree in audience of that melodious lamentation. For a while her fancy was caught by the picture of that grave pageant moving across London to the music of those poignant cadences. Her mind went back to a year or two ago when she had seen the Queen driving along Kensington High Street, a little old woman in black nodding to right and left in acknowledgment of her subjects' welcome. Now that little old woman in black was being borne on a gun-carriage, nothing left of her domination save the orb and scepter upon the coffin in which she lay dead. The funeral strains of Chopin died away, and their place was taken by the heavier grief of Handel's Dead March, so solemn that one seemed to hear above the crash of cymbals the tread of mourning emperors and kings. Mary felt it was wrong of her not to have made certain of beholding the procession, that she had no business to be standing here alone among the trees. She started to hurry forward in the direction of the music, so that above the crowd she might catch a glimpse of the plumes and helmets and perhaps even of the white pall itself. It began to seem of the greatest importance that she should have this glimpse, for she was thinking that without it she should miss the most important public event in her time. To-day would surely be a landmark in time to which everything in contemporary life would be referred. She must hurry. Already Handel's solemn beat was becoming muffled and dying into silence beyond the Marble Arch. This silence was tremendous. She hurried on, panting for breath. There at last was that endless mourning edge of black spectators, and there above them the plumes and the helmets of the cavalry flashing and rippling. Had the coffin passed? Once more the silence was rent by the plangent strains of Chopin.